Re-thinking necessity (al-Darūra) in al-Ghazālī's understanding of physical causation

Abstract

The present article analyzes al-Ghazālī's (1058 – 1111) effort to reconcile the theological concept of a causally efficacious Creator with the idea of regularity, and thus, predictability, in physical nature. Al-Ghazālī reframed the necessity (al-darūra) of causal relationships in nature in order to achieve two goals: one, theological and the other, epistemological. His intellectual solution ultimately preserved both the human ability to know material causal relations as well as divine creative omnipotence, in particular, God's ability to perform miracles. The Muslim discussion thus indirectly contributed to Western speculative thinking on this problem. The balanced approach that al-Ghazālī took, nevertheless, fell by the wayside within the Islamic environment where it was either ignored, or only partially understood, or narrowly and imperfectly interpreted. In the purely Muslim context, it also is essential to underscore the importance of al-Ghazālī's epistemological discoveries in laying the groundwork for the establishment of a paradigm of natural scientific speculation in the medieval Islamic world.